Gravdal
Sadist
6.7
Synopsis:
Yet another solid but unremarkable slab of corpse painted, blood smeared grimness from Norway...
Review:
I hate writing reviews of bands like this. Not crappy enough to pull out my litany of sarcastic jabs and Anna Nicole Smith references, but not good enough to make me dig deep into my repertoire of creative accolades. Gravdal’s debut of by the numbers, melodically malevolent black metal is just passable enough for cursory listens, but at the same time has absolutely nothing new to offer the genre.
Most of the riffs are within the realms of the expected modern, Scandinavian black metal scene such as Immortal, Marduk, Setherial, etc, etc, etc territory, but they do have a certain mid paced, restrained nastiness to them as the band isn’t afraid to simply slow things down and render more malign, moments while as heard early in “Tomhet,” “Lidelse,” “Selvmord,” “Sadist” and surprisingly groovy “Den Kalde Marsjen Hjem”. However, there are ample stern tremolo picked blast beats such as “Angst” and “Til Helvete”. But none of the riffs absolutely grab in a way such as say Walpurgisnacht or Spite Extreme Wing have recently. This is simply competent black metal more in the vein of other middle tier bands I’ve reviewed here like Aguynguerran, Vanmakt and Locus Mortis; Nothing extraordinary but acceptable for the genre.
At 28 minutes, and with a sharp but natural production, Sadist is eight short sharp stabs to your mid section that offer up something for die hard black metal fans looking for a solid new act to howl at the moon to.
